


and they grow

by subnivean



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Basically, Gardening, Gen, Pack, Trauma Recovery, i guess?, nice things for traumatized people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-30 00:47:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3916951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subnivean/pseuds/subnivean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Dirt?" Stiles prompted.</p><p>Kira nodded grimly. "I forgot that we were going to need a lot of it."</p><p>"Uh," Stiles gestured at the Preserve all around them, and Kira rolled her eyes.</p><p>"Dirt that's good for growing stuff, Stiles, you know what I mean."</p><p>Stiles stared at her blankly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and they grow

**Author's Note:**

> don't be a jerk reader is all i ask. literally that's all i ask, don't be a jerk and like post this to goodreads or wherever else, cause that really skeeves me out, or put it up for dl in a third party site (which is ridiculous since you can dl it here in multiple formats like c'mon people).

>> hey can i use your family's land for a thing  
  
<< no  
  
>> come on it's for school  
  
>> derek?  
  
>> i rly need the A   
  
>> i will even say please  
  
>> oh my god you're actually going to make me say it  
  
>> derek  
  
>> derek  
  
>> DEREK  
  
>> DEREK HALE  
  
>> fine ok i'll say it  
  
>> please can i use your family's land for a thing  
  
<< if it gets you to stop texting me  
  
>> YES THANK YOU  
  
\----------  
  
Economics Senior Project Proposal – Submitted by Kira Yukimura and Stiles Stilinski  
  
Purpose is to observe the engagement of local economy in the establishment of a community cooperative (in the form of communal gardens). Any member of the community of Beacon Hills may participate, though not be monetarily compensated. All materials and labour will likewise be donated, including the cooperative's location. Success will be measured on three levels: 1) amount of materials donated; 2) amount of hours donated; 3) amount (in pounds) of produce generated.   
  
\----------  
  
"Dirt," Kira said. She was in black ankle boots and bright blue shorts, a fluttery white loose tank top layered over a blushing pink one. It was still spring but she ran hot, which probably had something to do with being a thunder fox spirit, just maybe. Her hair was up in a high pony tail with the curls bouncing down. She squinted and her lips pursed, hands on hips, as she surveyed the territory Stiles had staked out with posts and string he'd scavenged from an abandoned worksite.   
  
Scavenging totally counted as donating and was going to be listed as such in their write-up. It was – passive donating, really, items left out in the open to rust or rot with disuse unless someone came along to spare them the fate.   
  
Stiles had marked out areas for seven raised garden beds and a tentative notion of an herb spiral to the side. He'd spent most of the morning on it, consulting print-outs from gardening sites and nearly breaking his dad's (donated! though only for a few days) tape measure, and for all that it was hardly physical work, sweat still sheened on his face and stuck his green blue plaid button-up across his back. He pulled it up over his head, swiped it across his forehead and neck, and tossed it in the general direction of his Jeep. It was a lot cooler wearing just a green t-shirt with his jeans. Then he matched Kira's pose, hands on his hips, and stared where she stared.  
  
"Dirt?" Stiles prompted.  
  
Kira nodded grimly. "I forgot that we were going to need a lot of it."  
  
"Uh," Stiles gestured at the Preserve all around them, and Kira rolled her eyes.  
  
"Dirt that's good for growing stuff, Stiles, you know what I mean."  
  
Stiles stared at her blankly.   
  
\----------  
  
'Dirt cheap' wasn't actually all that cheap. Especially since they probably also had to acquire sand and gravel, for drainage, which might not be too hard – Stiles was pretty sure he'd seen sand bags in one of the abandoned parts of town from when there were flash floods a few years back. He'd just have to collect a few of those and cut them open, problem solved.  
  
The _dirt_ , though, was a problem.   
  
He and Kira sat in his Jeep with cracked open coke cans, sipping and brainstorming.   
  
"We wanted it to be a community project, right?" Kira said. "So I really think –"  
  
"It'll take forever," Stiles said flatly. "Knocking door to door asking for a bucket of dirt from the backyard? Just explaining it that many times, for a bucket or two at a time, is not good time management."  
  
Kira's brows knocked together, frowny. It was reminiscent of the Hales. Stiles thought she was probably spending too much time with Derek. Kira said, "It's an easy way to get people interested and invested, especially since it's literally just dirt to them. It's more personal than the newsletter we were planning and they aren't likely to forget about the project, or us. Plus the gardens will _literally_ be built from the community, even if no one else ever shows up."  
  
"Ok, I'll give you the symbolics of it," Stiles said. Kira jabbed him in the chest with a pointy finger and he yelped. "What was that for?!"  
  
"Scott said to poke you when you use your asshole voice on me," she said. "It's the only way you'll learn."  
  
"Ugh, traitor," Stiles muttered. He closed his eyes and tilted his head against the headrest. Took a sip from his can. Thought about it. "Okay," he said, "Yeah, I agree, it'll probably be easier to get more people involved down the line if we start with the bucket of dirt pitch. But it'll still take longer than we have to get enough dirt that way, so..."  
  
"So?" Kira arched a brow.  
  
"So you do that, and I'll look at other opportunities."  
  
"Other opportunities." Kira rolled her eyes. But then she smiled that bright, interested, _engaged_ smile that had so totally enthralled Stiles' best friend, and stuck out the hand not holding her coke for Stiles to shake. "Ok," she said. "Good plan, partner."  
  
\----------  
  
Back in early '07 there was another suburb being developed pretty close to Beacon Hills tentatively called Beacon Heights. It was more sketched out than built, though there'd been a great deal of interest – it was even the reason go ahead had been given on construction for the now-defunct mall near Beacon Hills. The '08 crash left the model houses already built hollow as showcases with surrounding plots of land left empty of promised construction.  
  
All this really meant to Stiles was that there was no one there to stop him from pillaging what had once been ornate model landscaping for what he was sure was no less than premium grade dirt for growing shit.  
  
Quicker entrepreneurs than he had already long-since ripped the copper pipes from the houses, and over the last few years the houses had gradually been stripped of anything else remotely valuable – including the windows – but the dirt remained. Stiles drove around the creepy neighbourhood, quickly cataloguing how much he could probably haul out. It wouldn't quite be enough, he didn't think, but maybe Kira's methods could make up the difference. He'd need to borrow a truck and resign himself to shoveling. He could probably rope Scott into helping.   
  
First thing's first, though. Stiles swung the long way around town, stopping at strategic locations to pick up sandbags, before dropping them all back off at the garden site.   
  
He was tired then and it was getting late, so he went home, put food in his stomach, showered, jerked off, and slept.  
  
\----------  
  
In the morning Kira was at his door bright-eyed, bushy-tailed (metaphorically speaking) and holding a tray of green things. Stiles squinted. Seedlings. A tray of seedlings. In what looked like brown cardboard pots. "I need coffee," Stiles mumbled, but he held the door wider so Kira could come in.  
  
All that was on offer in the Stilinski house was stationhouse-style coffee: shitty, strong, of questionable provenance. Kira drank from a giant mug of the stuff without even a flinch as she ran down the list of names she'd hit up the day before, nodding briefly at the seedling tray. "And Mrs. Evans said she had some friends who also overplanted so she could probably get us different kinds of plants, not just tomatoes and eggplant. Like cucumber, maybe even melon or some corn."   
  
Kira'd had additional luck on the dirt front – old bags of potting soil, sacks of compost, one household whose gardener had moved into a Sacramento nursing home so there were gardening tools and supplies free on offer just needing to be picked up. "Oh!" Kira dug through her pockets. "I also got seeds, from basically every house. These are just a few of them. So many seeds, Stiles. I don't know if some of them are too old to germinate, but no harm in trying." She splayed a double handful of packets on the kitchen table.  
  
Stiles blinked fuzzily down at them. Little plastic baggies and small paper envelopes, some actual seed packets, labeled in small neat script – carrots, peas, beans, marigold. He touched the edge of one packet with a fingertip. He blinked at Kira and her excited smile, trying to muster up his own enthusiasm.   
  
He was very, very tired, and not just because it was the morning. He was tired all the time. When he closed his eyes, he still knew how to build bombs. But he pushed that down, smiled anyway and held up his hand for a high five.  
  
\----------  
  
"Why a garden?" He'd asked, when Kira had first approached him with the idea.  
  
Kira had smiled, eyes downcast. "I don't know," she said. "It seems simple, doesn't it? You put things in the dirt, and they grow." Simple – her voice was longing on the word. Like she felt how heavy all the complications they carried were.   
  
Stiles had crossed his arms. He liked Kira, but it wasn't like they did much together just the two of them, without Scott to mediate. "Why me?"  
  
Kira lifted her eyes to meet his. Stiles could see her search for and discard several possible answers. Finally, she'd shrugged. "I don't know," she'd said again. "I guess I thought maybe you'd want it too."  
  
\--------------  
  
Stiles got Scott and Liam (and Liam's step-dad's truck) to help with hauling dirt, and werewolf stamina made short work of getting them as much as possible out of the model homes' yards. The next day, so early in the morning it wasn't even dawn, Stiles dug. The sky was black above him. The ground was hard, dry. He had a shovel and a hoe. He turned over the earth in what would be the first of the garden bed plots, then with blistering hands emptied bags of sand and moved wheelbarrows of dirt. It might have been smarter to start with the posts, but he built them last, around the rich earth. His breath steamed in front of him and his face ran with sweat. His shirt stuck to him. His arms burned, muscles overtaxed, and his thighs ached from where he'd braced them against the ground.   
  
He worked himself exhausted, sweat dripping into his eyes. He was tired and he hurt, but it was good. He felt so good. He could have asked for help. Any number of people would have helped him. Scott would have been first in line, Kira only a step behind him. Except – Stiles looked around. The garden beds looked almost exactly as he wanted it to look. And he'd done that, just him, with his own hands.  
  
\----------  
  
Kira effortlessly charmed and organized the bored elderly volunteers who had already donated gardening paraphernalia and who were now committing their time, too. Malia didn't do much helping, except when Stiles specifically asked, but she did a lot of lounging around in increasingly short shorts, which Stiles on a personal level felt a great deal of appreciation for. And she was great about going on food and drink runs for whoever was out on the site, too.  
  
Even Stiles' dad came out after or before or between shifts, shading his eyes and looking out at the developing garden beds, the neat rows of staked plants and the sideways-tilting raspberry canes planted off to the side. They'd been donated by Mr. Garner, an enthusiastic old guy who was really into the community idea but basically clueless about the actual logistics of starting and running a communal garden. The upside was they could give pointed hints of tools and supplies they needed and more often than not he'd show up with the things within the week; the downside was, he also brought a lot of things they _didn't_ need and now had to somehow incorporate.   
  
The raspberry canes wouldn't even bear fruit until next year. But Mr. Garner had seemed so pleased with himself, flourishing the plants in their potting sacks with grandiose excitement, and anyway maybe it would take a year, but that gave them something to look forward to.  
  
There was just one issue that started off as a problem and only grew from there – _water_.  
  
\----------  
  
Setting everything up on Hale land might have enabled them to dodge a lot of city zoning rules and regulations, but it did isolate them from a lot of things. Parking lots, for one; a water supply, for two.   
  
Mrs. Evans had them setting up plastic barrels to catch the rain, but that was little help when no rain fell. California _was_ in perpetual drought. They were currently stuck with everyone bringing in gallon jugs of tap water, old plastic soda bottles and milk bottles, kind of gross looking all lined up around the edge of the garden plots. It worked, but it was a pain and required constant maintenance.   
  
\-----------  
  
>> hey derek do you mind if i fake your signature to get water turned back on close by your house  
  
<< that's illegal  
  
>> have you met me  
  
<< your dad is the actual law  
  
>> it's ok, no one's running against him in the next election  
  
>> derek?  
  
>> unless you explicitly say no in the next three two one  
  
>> ok i'm going to do it i'm going to do the thing  
  
<< you're an idiot   
  
<< i just called the city   
  
<< you'll have your water soon  
  
>> yes! dozens of tiny parched seedlings thank you  
  
\----------  
  
Given how fucked up all the assorted murder sprees and disasters had left their school year, the school board had decided to compensate by giving the option of more intensive, practical projects spread out over the end of year and across summer for those going into their junior and senior grades. Finstock already gave them a ridiculous amount of leeway in Economics – basically any project submitted was approved. Malia's was about re-establishing an identity after coming back to life from being declared dead. "See," she'd said, "I have to do all this anyway and now I'm getting a grade out of it." She'd beamed proudly, like she was finally getting the hang of school. Finstock _was_ making her write a paper on top of it, though, something about the individual's power in a capitalist system.   
  
Scott and Lydia were teamed up on making a functional, useful app for single parent income budgeting – Stiles and Malia and their dads had all filled out the survey they were basing it on. Lydia was doing most of the coding, saying it made her feel close to her grandmother, and Scott was doing most of the recruiting potential users and getting their feedback on beta tests. "It feels important," Scott had said, right when he and Lydia were still wording their proposal. "Like it could help a lot of people. Maybe make their lives a little bit easier." That was Stiles' best friend.  
  
Kira had shown up at Stiles' doorstep before school three days before proposals were due. Stiles was all set to do something about MMORPGs, especially since that gave him a valid excuse to spend most of the summer gaming.   
  
Kira had been frowning, but not in anger or upset. Thoughtful, serious. She was wearing a light purple sweater and a black skirt, and she stood cross-armed in Stiles' doorway, and she said, "I want to build something."   
  
\----------  
  
You put things in the dirt, and they grow.  
  
Mrs. Evans caught Stiles before noon on an overcast day, brooding over the seedlings in the garden beds. She carried a tray of six good-sized green plants. "Cherry tomatoes," she said cheerfully. "Come help me settle them in."  
  
Mrs. Evans swore by soaking the garden bed and the root ball of the plant to ensure successful transplants. "And with tomatoes, you bury most of the plant. Sideways, mind. They can grow roots along the stem. It makes them stronger to do it this way. Here, my arthritis – you do it. I'll show you."  
  
Leaning so close to the plants, Stiles could smell the greenness of their leaves. When he soaked the root ball, the tomato scent rose up sharply, sprightly. Even the leaves, too.   
  
"That's right," Mrs. Evans murmured. "Just like that. There you go."  
  
\------------  
  
Derek never came out to see what they'd done with the plot of land that had once been part of his backyard. Admittedly, a ways off from his house – the remnants weren't even visible from the garden site – but still close enough to run a hose from the pipes. The last Stiles heard from Scott, Derek and Braeden were going on long road trips slash bounty hunts together. Beacon Hills was still Derek's home base, but he didn't seem tied there anymore. Stiles saw him once, across the grocery store, head tilted and eyes crinkled as he smiled at Braeden, who was holding up two competing boxes of cereal. They looked happy.  
  
\---------------  
  
It was a communal garden and so it was _all_ symbolic, all meaningful because of the metaphor, because of what it meant. That was the romance of it. Neighbours – literal, and also in the figurative sense of co-habitants in the weird wacky murderous town of Beacon Hills – coming together to build something green, growing and new. That was part of what Kira and Stiles had been banking on to get the whole project up off the ground. That people would buy into it, would want to support it, would enjoy the story of it.  
  
Stiles had never been much for symbolism. It was useful in this instance because it helped him get a grade which would hopefully salvage his GPA. But he knew, too, that symbols were power. Because hadn't he died clutching his dad's Sheriff badge? And what was a badge except a symbol.  
  
And this symbol was: old dirt from a dead town, fed by water from a burned-out house, built by a boy whose hands knew the shape of bombs but also now roots, too. A progression from destruction. New start, new. Growth.   
  
This symbol was: maybe things get better. If we keep trying, if we keep building and growing, maybe things get greener. Maybe tomorrow is somewhere we want to live. Together.  
  
\------------  
  
"Not bad," Stiles said. Kira bumped his side with her shoulder. He looked down at her and saw her smiling at their garden. Her cheek was smudged with dirt and pulled weeds dangled from her gardening gloves.  
  
"No," she agreed, soft. "Not bad at all."  
  
  
  
  
  
  


  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
